Author Archives: Jonny Baker

We’ve developed a tradition for Advent at Grace, an alternative worship community in Ealing – Nine. It’s a very simple idea for a service (feel free to use it). We take the traditional nine lessons and carols framework and give it our own twist. We find nine volunteers willing to take part who are given one of the readings. They then have to choose a piece of music and do something to reflect/relate to the reading – this might be a piece of art, a ritual, a meditation, a thought, an audio-visual piece. At the service the nine readings are read from the bible and after each one the person does their piece and play their chosen piece of music. Followed of course by mulled wine and mince pies. It’s highly participative and creative. People produce amazing things. On reflection I think it might be an example of Worship 2.0 …?

There have been a spate of articles recently on the new revolution in the internet which has become known as Web 2.0. The Guardian Weekend magazine ran a 15 page feature called the Bigger Bang that interviewed several of the entrepreneurs behind these startups. In it John Lancaster said “What all these new kind of sites share is an approach to creating things: “user-created content”, in the jargon. The internet is no longer about corporations telling you what to do, think or buy; it’s about things people create.” Read More »

In this podcast from worshippodcast.com Jonny Baker discusses various issues related to the renewal of worship. The issues include worship as related to the local culture/context, the role of creativity and the imagination, the concept that worship is the work of the people, and the need for leaders to take risks in the area of worship.

Jonny works for the Church Mission Society and is a member of Grace, an alternative worship community that is a congregation of St Mary’s Anglican church in West London. He has authored the book Alternative Worship, which is a collection of liturgical resources for the church year. He also runs Proost, a creative company that produces inspiring resources that fuel faith.

Welcome to a ‘Grace’ worship service simply entitled slow. The worship space is divided into two halves by back to back projection screens. On one side a VJ (like a DJ but mixing visual images rather than music) mixes slow images and the other fast images. People sit whichever side they relate to most. We take about 10 minutes in contemplative prayer to quiet down in God’s presence to a backdrop of ambient tunes played by a DJ. A glass jar with sand in water is shaken and placed to settle down as picture of what stilling our hearts might be like. An image of the jar is projected on the screens while we listen to Radiohead’s The Tourist with the lyric ‘hey man slow down’ projected over the image of the jar. The story of Mary and Martha is the basis for thinking about the pace of our lives and whether we are naturally more commuters or contemplatives and what pace God might be calling us to. The service has been inspired by Asian theologian, Kosuke Koyama who suggests in ‘The Three Mile an Hour God’ that God’s pace is walking pace. A couple of chants are sung over chilled electronic tracks and we make prayer bracelets and use the Orthodox Jesus prayer as a way of asking for God’s mercy in our lives. In response to the service we are invited to take away a boiled sweet to suck on slowly if we want to ask God to help us slow down or a soft sweet to eat quickly if we felt the need to speed up. Read More »

Given the recent somewhat contraversial posts and discussions here about whether contemporary worship music was theologically shallow, boring or even annoying I thought it would be good to look at a totally different expression of worship. Here Jonny Baker considers some alternatives:

In an old gothic church in South London, images of the city are projected on white sheets that surround a worship space. The images are gritty and urban – towerblocks and street scenes. On the floor is a huge map of the city made out of pages of a London A-Z map. Bread and wine rest on a holy table – in this case a concrete slab on the floor. Encircling the concrete are words of scripture in a circle projected from above. An urban crowd, age range 20-40ish gradually drift in. A DJ is quietly spinning tunes that evoke an atmosphere. There are no pews just a hard floor to sit on. It is a fantastic space. This is part of a series called concrete liturgies by a Christian community Vaux – where they are exploring what it means to express faith and worship in the language of the city.

One wonderful unforgettable moment is when everyone is invited to draw on the map a journey they have made in the city that week. The ink is pretty thick and stands up from the paper. The lights are turned out and a UV light is turned on. The effect is magical – the journeys that weave across the city glow in the dark. We listen to scriptures on the incarnation, that God loves the city and the people who live in the city, that Christ is in us and where we have been in the city Christ has been. It is a simply stunning moment. Read More »

Over the last 15 years the movement that has been called ‘alternative worship’ has ploughed a furrow in worship coming up with inspiring new songs, liturgies, rituals, visuals, installations, artistic creations and worship experiences. I personally have found it incredibly exciting, renewing my faith and sparking my imagination in all sorts of ways.

When the movement began it was shocking. Visual projections, new technologies, DJ music, and so on all seemed out of place in church. The re-theologising that went with it to contextualise the gospel in a postmodern world was also perceived as threatening. However the climate has now changed and many of the discoveries made in alternative worship don’t seem so shocking any more – many of the creative practices have crept into the mainstream and actually they hold some clues for how to renew worship in many of our churches. Alternative worship groups were simply early adopters on the front edge of what was to come.

False Dilemma
In worship there seems to be a choice between the liturgical tradition which is served up in a very similar fashion each week. Whilst it holds the potential for depth it can easily dry up for people and seem very samey. On the other hand the more charismatic tradition in worship has created space for free expression in singing intimate songs of praise and worship, along with ministry. But this worship often dries up for different reasons – it lacks depth and has ended up being very predictable in its own way as well. The range of themes and language in the songs and prayers simply doesn’t address all the issues of life. After a few years people want something more. Alternative worship looked for a third path that broke that false dilemma. In doing so it turned back to the liturgical traditions of the church but reframed them often in simple but imaginative ways, making connections with everyday life and popular culture. This is why I think many of the groups found a home in Anglican churches, because they were finding ways to make the traditions live again rather than turning away from them. It is common to find groups working with the seasons of the church calendar, using basic structures of services as building blocks for liturgies, finding forgotten treasures in the tradition such as the labyrinth and reinventing them, taking communion back into the context of a meal and so on. Read More »